South Korea

South Korea’s media environment was reshaped by the constitutional crisis triggered on 3 December 2024, when President Yoon Suk-yeol declared emergency martial law. On 4 April 2025 the Constitutional Court removed him from office, finding that his declaration and implementation of martial law violated the Constitution and statutes, undermined constitutional institutions and fundamental rights and amounted to grave violations warranting removal. Lee Jae-myung was elected president in June 2025 and took office on 4 June.

The regulatory architecture changed under the new administration. The Korea Communications Commission was abolished and replaced on 1 October 2025 by the Korea Media and Communications Commission, a seven-member body with broader jurisdiction across broadcasting, media and communications. Although formally established that day, the new Commission did not hold its first plenary meeting until 10 April 2026, leaving implementation of parts of the broadcasting reform delayed for roughly six months.

South Korea ranked 47th of 180 countries in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 69.12, rising fourteen positions from 61st and 64.06 in 2025. The improvement followed a prolonged deterioration in its RSF score, which fell in every annual edition from 76.57 in 2021 to 64.06 in 2025; its ranking moved from 42nd to 61st over the same period, although it improved by one position between 2024 and 2025.

Three public-media statutes were amended in 2025. The amended Broadcasting Act, governing KBS, took effect on 26 August; the amended Foundation for Broadcast Culture Act, governing MBC’s controlling shareholder, took effect on 9 September; and the amended Korea Educational Broadcasting System Act took effect on the same day. The reforms expanded the respective governing boards and diversified nomination beyond predominantly political and regulatory channels to include audience, employee, academic, legal and educational constituencies. Each public broadcaster’s new presidential-selection system incorporates a representative citizens’ recommendation process and a three-fifths board threshold.

The wider Broadcasting Act reform also created ten-member programming committees comprising five representatives nominated by management and five by employees, with authority over specified matters concerning programming rules and editorial autonomy. It requires the executive responsible for news at covered broadcasters to be appointed with the consent of a majority of employees working in the news field.

State Media Monitor maps four organisations in South Korea, all classified Independent Public Media. Implementation of the new safeguards differed substantially among them by the end of August 2026.

MBC was furthest advanced in replacing its leadership under the new process. The 13-member Foundation for Broadcast Culture board first met on 23 July with eleven directors in office, elected Kang Hyung-chul as substantive chair on 4 August and closed applications for the first presidential selection under the reformed system on 27 August, with twenty candidates applying.

EBS convened its reconstituted ninth board on 19 August with eleven of 13 directors and elected Cho Ho-yeon as chair. Only the two parliamentary nominations allocated to the opposition People Power Party remained outstanding. The board began preparations to select a successor to Kim You-yeol, who remains president after a court cancelled the previous regulator’s attempt to replace him.

KBS remained least complete at board level, with eight of 15 directors in office and Jeong Jae-gwon serving as chair on an explicitly temporary basis. Park Jang-beom, appointed president under the previous administration, remained in office under transitional provisions. Implementation nevertheless moved materially during August: the statutory programming committee held its first meeting on 14 August, the board formally opened the new presidential-selection process on 26 August, and on 31 August the Seoul Southern District Court rejected three challenges to the employee-representation arrangements and recognised the National Union of Mediaworkers’ KBS branch as the majority union for that purpose.

Yonhap News Agency was not covered by the 2025 public-broadcasting reforms. Its separate governance system, centred on the Korea News Agency Commission, remained unchanged during the review period. On 20 August 2026, however, eighteen lawmakers introduced legislation proposing to expand and diversify the Commission, make selection of Yonhap’s president more transparent and strengthen statutory mechanisms concerning editorial governance. The bill was referred to the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee on 21 August.

The strengthening of public-media governance took place alongside developments that raised separate press-freedom concerns. On 24 December 2025 the National Assembly passed an amendment to the Information and Communications Network Act aimed at false and manipulated information, over an opposition boycott. Promulgated as Act No. 21305 on 6 January 2026, it entered into force on 7 July 2026. Among its provisions, qualifying professional publishers repeatedly distributing false or fabricated information online can face damages of up to five times the actual loss caused. Large online platforms also acquired new obligations concerning reports of such material.

Journalism organisations warned that the law could have a chilling effect. The Journalists Association of Korea argued that the prospect of repeated large damage claims and litigation could discourage legitimate scrutiny of people in power, while the authorities maintained that the legislation contained safeguards against censorship and was necessary to address deliberate disinformation.

Questions also arose over political rhetoric towards broadcasters. President Lee and senior officials publicly criticised the perceived quality and political bias of some television programming in early 2026. On 2 June, Lee asked the media regulator whether sanctions were available when broadcasters lost neutrality or became highly partisan, referring to outlets behaving like party mouthpieces and repeatedly carrying distortion or fabrication. The comments do not establish intervention in individual editorial decisions but remain relevant in assessing the political environment in which the new independence safeguards operate.

South Korea’s AI Basic Act has applied since 22 January 2026 and establishes transparency and labelling obligations for AI business operators providing generative-AI services and certain synthetic outputs. State Media Monitor identified no separate broadcaster-specific statutory rule requiring disclosure for every journalistic use of artificial intelligence.

All four mapped organisations nevertheless have identifiable AI governance or disclosure practices. KBS adopted detailed AI Guidelines in August 2025, including human oversight, verification and audience-disclosure requirements. MBC incorporated specific AI provisions into production rules effective in May 2026, including verification requirements for news and current affairs. EBS publicly confirmed internal AI production guidelines in March 2026 centred on human responsibility and verification. Yonhap currently lists a dedicated AI Use Guidelines policy on its website and explicitly labels its automated AI-generated article summaries. The extent and form of the safeguards therefore differ across the four organisations, but AI use is no longer an unregulated or merely prospective issue at any of them.

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